When your job is a headache, the children don’t listen and your spouse isn’t supportive of or even willing to acknowledge all you do, it’s all too easy to see them as the problem.
It’s not that there are no challenges in life; it is how one responds that determines whether they are problems or opportunities.
“When I worked in corporate from ’84 to ’98, every day there was something or somebody to blame: my boss, not getting a promotion and sometimes I was the party; I was bringing the blues,” said leadership trainer and motivational speaker Jim Smith, president and CEO of JIMPACT Enterprises, Inc.
Smith, author of “The No Excuse Guide to Success,” said once he learned to change his attitude and approach to his career, he was able to share that knowledge with others.
The author of “From Average to Awesome: Lessons for Living an Extraordinary Life” and co-author with Ken Blanchard, Jack Canfield and others of “The Masters of Success,” said he takes a tough approach with clients because stressing themselves out over work or relationships doesn’t serve them mentally, physically or professionally.
“I’m trying to get the people to look at the man or person in the mirror and change his ways,” Smith told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
“When I’m speaking, I don’t let up and some people don’t like that style…people think there is a magic pill to make them change.
“It’s reminding them that energy and action follow that and reminding them that what they say is what they are. What you focus on grows. If you focus on hiccups, they don’t go away. If you go to the mailbox, are you looking for bills or checks?”
Even the way we look at the political scene involves blame and frustration, Smith said.
Criticism of President Obama during his first term focused largely on blaming the president for not getting things done, although he needed cooperation from Congress, agency heads and other officials and industry leaders, Smith said.
“Of late, it’s been nonstop blaming the president for everything, especially the economy,” Smith said. “He said ‘Yes We Can’; he didn’t say ‘Yes I Can.’”
“The No Excuse Guide to Success” focuses on accountability and positive outcomes and removing self-created barriers. It also provides coping mechanisms no matter what life throws your way.
The action guide contains quizzes, exercises and forms to create a personal action plan to achieve goals, from losing weight to winning a promotion to starting a business. Additional exercises are available on his website.
Chapter 2, for example, tells the story of a woman whose priorities changed when faced with a life-threatening illness. Her decision to develop “appropriate focus and expectation [of a positive outcome]” changed the trajectory of her life.
In Chapter 3, Smith lists his “Super Six Tenets for Eliminating Fear.” He gives a personal testimony about how fear created problems for him when he launched his own business and had several contracts fall through and how the tenets helped him overcome his fears. The beliefs include meditation, a spiritual connection and examining the stories we tell ourselves about why we can’t or don’t succeed.
“It wasn’t until I shifted my energy and started looking for ways out and not for ways to stay” in a miserable situation that Smith’s life improved. “Nine out of 10 times people say, ‘I’ve taken this as far as I can go.’ I’ve never taken Jim as far as I can go.”
“Faith,” Smith said, “comes from staying in it when you’re really going through it…your life starts once you are committed.”
